Tuesday, April 5, 2011

bookmark sync duel

I use Firefox for my primary browser (although I use Gnome Epiphany when I just want something to load quickly, I use Opera because it's got the most sensible RSS system, and I use Internet Explorer for work because our company still uses an ActiveX control for much of the database printing). I use more than one computer, and when I first heard about XMarks, a bookmark sync service, I thought it was a great idea. Last year, however, XMarks was looking at hard times and threatened to close up shop, so I migrated to Firefox Sync.

Firefox Sync not only backed up my bookmarks, but also my settings and my passwords, between all of my computers. This was actually pretty cool, as I keep my passwords in a Personal Information Manager, but it lives on my USB drive, which I don't always have with me (note: the free version of EPIM works in Linux under Wine, the paid version doesn't. You have been warned).

Recently, though, Firefox Sync stopped working on the netbook. After a number of tweaks and attempted fixes, I did a quick search - and lo and behold, XMarks has risen from the ashes, and has been bought by a password sync company, LastPass. So a quick uninstall/install, and Xmarks is working away, and another quick checkout, and LastPass is (apparently) happily managing my passwords (LastPass adds a button to the toolbar, and all of the pages for which you have saved passwords are available - you can even choose which you want if you have multiple logins for the same site, which I have for some vendors).

If you go back to those last couple of links in the first paragraph of this post: as I write this, Firefox Sync has two stars (I'm not the only person who's had connection problems) and XMarks has four. These friends, as the Quakers say, speak my mind.

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